The Galaxy Porterville originally opened as an 8-screen house. An additional 400-seat auditorium was added the following year. The theater was designed by the Estes Park, Colorado, architectural firm Thorp Associates, which has gone on to design a number of other projects for Galaxy Theatres.

The Porterville, Indio, Calexico, and La Quinta theaters do all have a familial similarity, and I suspect that the connection is that they were probably all designed by Thorp Associates.

Thorp designed the Galaxy Porterville for Rafe Cohen’s newly-launched Galaxy Theatres chain, but prior to entering the exhibition business with this theater, Cohen had long been a developer of theaters that were operated by other chains. Metropolitan might well have been among those chains, and I believe that Resort Theatres was itself a subsidiary of Metropolitan.

The web site of Thorp Associates lists ten of its theater designs, and projects for both Galaxy and Metropolitan are among them, though none of the houses under discussion here are listed.